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Summary

Wesley Crusher comes running onto the bridge and apologizes to CaptainPicard for being ten minutes late for a summon. Picard chastises the young man, then, smiling, tells the young ensign that a position has opened in this year's class at Starfleet Academy and that Wesley has been granted the posting. He would be leaving in two weeks, and will have to work hard to catch up with his classmates.

In the interim, Picard is to arbitrate a mining dispute on Pentarus V, and he opts to bring Wesley along to observe. The USS Enterprise-D rendezvouses with Captain Dirgo's shuttle, and Picard and Wesley depart with Dirgo to Pentarus III. On first meeting Dirgo, Wesley quietly makes a rude comment to Geordi on Dirgo calling himself a Captain -- though he holds no formal rank and commands only a mining shuttle. Dirgo makes it clear he heard it and says the ship has over 10,000 hours of flight recorded and means a lot to him and his people. Shortly before their departure, the Enterprise receives a distress signal from Gamelan V – they are receiving critical levels of radiation from a "space barge" which is entering their atmosphere. The Enterprise speeds off under Riker's command to assist.

Meanwhile, Dirgo's shuttle suffers a mishap, and has to crash land on Lambda Paz, a desert moon of Pentarus III. Dirgo tells Picard that since the mining shuttle had very little space, he depended on the replicator for supplies, leaving them only with a medicine pouch. Picard decides they must head towards a mountain to find shelter, to which Dirgo objects but then admits he has no better alternative. After leaving a directional marker on the ground so that a rescue party may find them, they start their walk. Dirgo is seen secretly drinking clear liquid from a bottle. During their hike, Wesley notes some strange energy readings in the direction of their travel. When finally in a cavern in the mountain, the bottle falls from Dirgo's jacket, and is revealed to be an alcoholic beverage called dresci. Dirgo makes an excuse that "I was going to hand it round". Picard confiscates it and says that it would serve better as a disinfectant or coolant, and orders it to be kept under guard in the medicine box.

They find a section with an increased level of the energy readings, and investigating, the trio find a strange fountain of water in it. The fountain is protected by a force field, and attempts by Dirgo to fire at the field with his phaser unleashes a sentry energy weapon which knocks the weapon from his hand and encases it in a selenium-fiber shell. In the commotion, a landslide begins over Wesley, but Picard pushes him out of the way, suffering a broken leg, fractured arm, and internal bleeding in the process. Weakened, Picard tells Wesley that he has to take charge, and deter Dirgo from any further rash attempts to breach the force field. But clearly, their need for water is greater than ever.

Dirgo runs out of patience and tries to convince Wesley to make another attempt to breach the force field. This attempt results in Dirgo being encased in the shell, and apparently killed. Wesley struggles to figure out a way to disable the force field, while keeping Picard conscious and comfortable. During some tense and emotional exchanges, Picard tells the boy that he envies him, saying "your adventures are just beginning." He urges Wesley to seek out Boothby, the "wisest man at the Academy." Wesley asks what he teaches, to which Picard answers, "He's the groundskeeper." Wesley confesses that everything he has done to succeed on the Enterprise has been to make Picard proud of him. Picard tells him that he's always been proud of him.

In the Gamelan system, the Enterprise-D manages to slingshot the leaking barge directly into Gamelan's sun by tractoring it through an asteroid belt, narrowly avoiding lethal radiation exposure to the crew in the process. They rush back to the Pentarus system to participate in the search for the now overdue shuttle. They begin with the class M moons of Pentarus III, which have not yet been searched.

On the moon, Wesley jerry-rigs his combadge and tricorder to interfere and possibly disable the energy sentry. He succeeds and disables the force field around the fountain. He brings water to Picard in one of the shuttle's survival kit cases.

Wesley is woken some time later by his mother, who informs him that Picard is all right and his vital signs are stabilized. As Picard is carried out on a stretcher, he grabs Wesley's hand and confesses, "You will be missed."

Background Information

Story and production

This episode was created expressly with the purpose of providing an appropriate way for Wil Wheaton to leave the show. Wheaton had asked to leave The Next Generation so he could pursue offers to appear in feature films. (Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion 2nd ed., p. 149)

Michael Piller commented, "There had been a lot of very bad feeling around here about the way Tasha Yar was sent off. So we were determined to give Wesley a send-off that had real value and something that stayed with us. We finally decided that he would go to the Academy, which I think was Gene's idea [and] the most reasonable and easiest idea, which also keeps him alive for future episodes." (Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, p. 212)

Jeri Taylor recalled, "That's the episode I probably put more work on than any all year long, because it was a combination of a very delicate kind of interpersonal story, and the dreaded technical story which is the garbage scow in space. So I had this supertechnical thing going on at the same time as this delicate kind of interpersonal story." (Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, p. 212)

The shuttle Nenebek was named after Larry Nemecek. Jeri Taylor related to Nemecek years later that she had one of his TNG Concordances on her shelf, and simply altered two of the letters in his last name. [X]wbm

The fountain was created on Stage 16. Rick Berman recalled, "We had huge optical problems with the fountain. It was a nightmare. It was something we built and it didn't work. Then we were going to do it optically and that didn't work. So we had a lot of technical problems." (Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, p. 212)

The incident where Picard finds and commandeers the dresci and orders it to be kept in the medicine box is similar to, and may have been inspired by, a real incident that happened in Shackleton's Antarctic expedition as reported in a television reconstruction.

Continuity

Before beginning their trek to the mountains, Dirgo distributes some phasers he scavenged from his damaged shuttle. The props used are Starfleet phaser pistols circa 2285, from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, which would make sense since Dirgo operated his shuttle with old and outdated equipment.

According to the graphic on Data's ops station, the shuttle Nenebek leaves through the Main shuttlebay. The Main shuttlebay was only seen once more in "Cause and Effect".

Reception

Michael Piller remarked, "I think Jeri did a wonderful job on the script and Corey Allen, who is one of my favorite directors, gave you the best pieces of film you can get. If it gets an A- instead of an A, it's only because the story itself, of two guys trapped on a planets and how do we get off, in general is not very original, and the story of the garbage scow was no great shakes either. But I think we handled it pretty well." (Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, p. 212)

Rick Berman added, "That's one of my favorite episodes. I think it was very poignant and the acting on the part of our guest cast, Nick Tate, Patrick's work and Wil's, was just excellent. I thought it was just a terrific piece of drama." (Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, p. 212)

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